Yes, the switch to all-digital transmissions should be easy and painless for everyone.
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Friday, October 17, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Klingons and Wookies
This is the funniest thing I've seen in the past couple of weeks. Jim, the guy in the blue shirt, is trying to bait Dwight, the guy in the foreground, into wasting time at work. Dwight is a stickler for canon in sci-fi/fantasy fiction. Hilarity ensues.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Hulu There!
In an effort to shift the tone around here away from wailing and the gnashing of teeth, I'd like to point your browser to Hulu.com. It's free to sign up. Once you do, you'll have access to a number of decent television shows and movies. Like television, there are commercials, but there's never a break like the yawning gap of a twenty minute chasm between the last set and the end of the movie you're trying to finish. Most of the time, it's fifteen or thirty seconds and you're back to the feature.
We've been watching it a bit since we've all been sick, we don't have a TV, and the two-at-a-time Netflix queue can't spit out or requests quickly enough. I mostly like sticking to the television offerings. We keep up with our viewings of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report this way. King of the Hill is finally accessible whenever I'm ready for it instead of being shifted around table-tennis style between five different time slots. They also have an all too brief list of Three Stooges shorts. Granted, these are some of the best the Stooges have to offer, but there are still more I'd like to see up there. Thankfully, they've confined the offerings to the depression-era Curly years. The episode Three Little Beers always makes me laugh.
We've been watching it a bit since we've all been sick, we don't have a TV, and the two-at-a-time Netflix queue can't spit out or requests quickly enough. I mostly like sticking to the television offerings. We keep up with our viewings of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report this way. King of the Hill is finally accessible whenever I'm ready for it instead of being shifted around table-tennis style between five different time slots. They also have an all too brief list of Three Stooges shorts. Granted, these are some of the best the Stooges have to offer, but there are still more I'd like to see up there. Thankfully, they've confined the offerings to the depression-era Curly years. The episode Three Little Beers always makes me laugh.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Televised Presidents
Amy and I have been researching televisions and we came to a decision last Saturday about what we wanted. We ended up finding the Sony 34XS955 to be a good fit for what we wanted currently and for future component upgrades as well. It will be delivered on Saturday and I'm looking forward to rewatching my entire DVD collection on the new set.
Of course, the new set is a 16:9 set that doesn't fit in the furniture that we have. So, we took a trip to Ikea last night and picked out a new entertainment center that should work out well. The biggest concern we had to face with this new TV set was it's weight. The CRT set weighs in at 205 pounds and not every shelving unit can support that kind of mass. It was really just a price vs. pounds issue. We chose pounds because the price for less poundage was just too high.
I've been listening to a couple later CDs by the Presidents of the USA. I hadn't realized that they'd released any new material since II and the new sets Freaked Out and Small and Love Everybody are great. I'm not sure what it is with songs about planets and small bits of fuzz that drive toy cars that I find so appealing. Regardless, I've always really liked these guys and, in certain ways, these two newer albums are consistently better than their older stuff. I still think Dune Buggy is one of my favorite songs, but Jupiter and Poke and Destroy are now also at the top of the list.
Of course, the new set is a 16:9 set that doesn't fit in the furniture that we have. So, we took a trip to Ikea last night and picked out a new entertainment center that should work out well. The biggest concern we had to face with this new TV set was it's weight. The CRT set weighs in at 205 pounds and not every shelving unit can support that kind of mass. It was really just a price vs. pounds issue. We chose pounds because the price for less poundage was just too high.
I've been listening to a couple later CDs by the Presidents of the USA. I hadn't realized that they'd released any new material since II and the new sets Freaked Out and Small and Love Everybody are great. I'm not sure what it is with songs about planets and small bits of fuzz that drive toy cars that I find so appealing. Regardless, I've always really liked these guys and, in certain ways, these two newer albums are consistently better than their older stuff. I still think Dune Buggy is one of my favorite songs, but Jupiter and Poke and Destroy are now also at the top of the list.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
High-Speed Chase Down Memory Lane
Just the good ol' boys,
never meanin' no harm.
Beats all you never saw,
been in trouble with the law
since the day they was born.
In case you couldn't tell, I caught a few episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard last weekend during the Dukes marathon on CMT. I don't think I'd actually seen a whole episode from start to finish since I was eight or nine years old. Obviously, I hadn't forgotten about the car chases and Rosco P. Coltrane and the car chases and Boss Hogg and the car chases and Daisy... and the car chases. It really makes me thankful for creative people who don't title things only by the majority of what they contain, otherwise the show might have been called Goofy Southerners in Cars. In all honesty, even as a kid, I don't really think I cared nearly as much about the car chase as a whole element or the show. All I ever really wanted to see was that '69 Charger catch some serious air.
I remember it being my favorite show for quite some time and even being more than a little disappointed that Bo and Luke were replaced by two shmoes named Coy and Vance for a single season. Even though I was only nine years old I still knew that those two guys were awful. Anyway, while I was watching the marathon, I suddenly started to remember all the Dukes of Hazzard loot I had. I remembered having a T-shirt that had one of the iron-on styled images on the front with a sparkly outline around the image. You know, the ones teenagers are wearing now becasue they're so ironically cool. And I remembered the Etch-a-Sketch inlays that let you play connect the dots with the General Lee and pretend to race around the back roads of Hazzard County to escape the cops even though you were just a little grey line. I also had a the Matchbox version of the General Lee and a little wind-up version of it that sat in a plastic case that I kept strapped to my wrist. The little knob to wind the gears up stuck out of the side of the case and at my command, I could put my wrist to the floor, pop the case open, and the car would speed across the floor for about two seconds until it hit anything even remotely resembling carpet.
There was also the record album as well as the 45 single of the theme song. I remember role-playing Dukes of Hazzard scenes in my bedroom while I played the theme song from the 45 single. The only catch was that my record player at the time didn't have an arm that would return to the beginning of the record once it reached the end which meant that there was always a commercial break ever two to three minutes while I broke character to start the song from the beginning. Oh, and I vaugely remember having a plastic mock-up toy mountain that was supposed to represent Hazzard county that included yet another car that could wind itself up as you pulled it back along the floor.
Thankfully, the show reminded me about more than toys and records, although the toy memories dwarf everything else. I remembered saying out loud while watching the show that when I got my driver's license, I would drive around like the Dukes of Hazzard. My ever-practical dad then asked me where exactly it was that I thought that I could drive like that and get away with it. I don't remember my exact reply, but it was something along the lines of, "On the back roads!" Yeah... funny thing about that... it turns out I was right. Except for the jumping across rivers part. Or the driving on two wheels part. But other than those stunts, I think I eventually lived the dream.
Oddly enough, one of the commercials that played quite a bit in between car stunts was a clip about Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper which, hands down, is the longest, most cumbersome title for a soda that I can remember. Anyway, one of the commercials for this new, very long flavor makes use of the song, Mahna Mahna, from the Muppet Show. Jeff Matheson, a friend from my halcyon days in the mid-80s, and I used to sing that song during recess in between bouts of petty vandalism, one of us taking the speaking part, the other taking the falsetto singing part, and then eventually trading off. By the way, just in case you're prepared to chastise me for the petty vandalism, most of it was pulling crab apples off a tree at the back of the playground and throwing them at fourth graders. See? It was all for a good cause.
never meanin' no harm.
Beats all you never saw,
been in trouble with the law
since the day they was born.
In case you couldn't tell, I caught a few episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard last weekend during the Dukes marathon on CMT. I don't think I'd actually seen a whole episode from start to finish since I was eight or nine years old. Obviously, I hadn't forgotten about the car chases and Rosco P. Coltrane and the car chases and Boss Hogg and the car chases and Daisy... and the car chases. It really makes me thankful for creative people who don't title things only by the majority of what they contain, otherwise the show might have been called Goofy Southerners in Cars. In all honesty, even as a kid, I don't really think I cared nearly as much about the car chase as a whole element or the show. All I ever really wanted to see was that '69 Charger catch some serious air.
I remember it being my favorite show for quite some time and even being more than a little disappointed that Bo and Luke were replaced by two shmoes named Coy and Vance for a single season. Even though I was only nine years old I still knew that those two guys were awful. Anyway, while I was watching the marathon, I suddenly started to remember all the Dukes of Hazzard loot I had. I remembered having a T-shirt that had one of the iron-on styled images on the front with a sparkly outline around the image. You know, the ones teenagers are wearing now becasue they're so ironically cool. And I remembered the Etch-a-Sketch inlays that let you play connect the dots with the General Lee and pretend to race around the back roads of Hazzard County to escape the cops even though you were just a little grey line. I also had a the Matchbox version of the General Lee and a little wind-up version of it that sat in a plastic case that I kept strapped to my wrist. The little knob to wind the gears up stuck out of the side of the case and at my command, I could put my wrist to the floor, pop the case open, and the car would speed across the floor for about two seconds until it hit anything even remotely resembling carpet.
There was also the record album as well as the 45 single of the theme song. I remember role-playing Dukes of Hazzard scenes in my bedroom while I played the theme song from the 45 single. The only catch was that my record player at the time didn't have an arm that would return to the beginning of the record once it reached the end which meant that there was always a commercial break ever two to three minutes while I broke character to start the song from the beginning. Oh, and I vaugely remember having a plastic mock-up toy mountain that was supposed to represent Hazzard county that included yet another car that could wind itself up as you pulled it back along the floor.
Thankfully, the show reminded me about more than toys and records, although the toy memories dwarf everything else. I remembered saying out loud while watching the show that when I got my driver's license, I would drive around like the Dukes of Hazzard. My ever-practical dad then asked me where exactly it was that I thought that I could drive like that and get away with it. I don't remember my exact reply, but it was something along the lines of, "On the back roads!" Yeah... funny thing about that... it turns out I was right. Except for the jumping across rivers part. Or the driving on two wheels part. But other than those stunts, I think I eventually lived the dream.
Oddly enough, one of the commercials that played quite a bit in between car stunts was a clip about Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper which, hands down, is the longest, most cumbersome title for a soda that I can remember. Anyway, one of the commercials for this new, very long flavor makes use of the song, Mahna Mahna, from the Muppet Show. Jeff Matheson, a friend from my halcyon days in the mid-80s, and I used to sing that song during recess in between bouts of petty vandalism, one of us taking the speaking part, the other taking the falsetto singing part, and then eventually trading off. By the way, just in case you're prepared to chastise me for the petty vandalism, most of it was pulling crab apples off a tree at the back of the playground and throwing them at fourth graders. See? It was all for a good cause.
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